Leadership

Ezekiel Dixon-Román is Professor of Critical Race, Media, & Educational Studies and Director of the Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Advanced Study. He is also co-founder and Director of the Institute in Critical Quantitative, Computational, & Mixed Methodologies and the Critical Computation Bureau. He joined the Teachers College faculty on January 1 2023 from the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice.

His research program makes critical interventions towards re-theorizing the technologies and practices of quantification that he understands as mediums and agencies of sociopolitical systems, whereby race and other assemblages of difference are byproducts. He is particularly interested in how power generates difference, especially in bodily capacities to change and be changed. His research question addresses how sociotechnical systems of quantification work on, with, and in the body to produce racialized demarcations, which decide which bodily capacities to regenerate and which to debilitate. Dixon-Román argues that, in the ‘computational turn’ of global neoliberal racial capitalism, the biopolitics of statistical demarcations of bodies forms and shapes the movement and flow of power and sociopolitical relations. As such, his research is invested in speculative questions of futurity that rethink technologies of quantification toward onto-epistemologies other-wise. He engages with philosophical and methodological interventions toward developing alternative modes of inquiry and practices of quantification that might enable critical space for reconstituting sociopolitical relations and the movement and flow of social life.

Dr. Dixon-Román is the author of Inheriting Possibility: Social Reproduction & Quantification in Education (2017, University of Minnesota Press). In this book project, he reconceptualizes quantification and theories of social reproduction in education from a cultural theoretical lens that posits culture is nature and the human is one of myriad expressions of Earth’s becoming. Inheriting Possibility received the 2018 Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research Association.

He also co-edited Thinking Comprehensively About Education: Spaces of Educative Possibility and Their Implications for Public Policy (2012, Routledge) and more recently Black Radical Love: A New Black Reconstruction through the Thought & Activism of Edmund W. Gordon (2023, Third World Press). In addition, he co-guest edited “Alternative Ontologies of Number: Rethinking the Quantitative in Computational Culture” (2016, Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies), “The computational turn in education research: Critical and creative perspectives on the digital data deluge” (2017, Research in Education), “Control Societies @30: Technopolitical Forces and Ontologies of Difference” (2020, Social Text Online), and “Dialogues on Recursive Colonialism, Speculative Computation, and the Techno-Social” (2021, eflux journal). He is currently working on two book projects: (1) a co-edited collection, Recursive Colonialisms: Technology, Culture, Politics and (2) an authored book project, Haunting Algorithms: Algorithmic Governance and Logics of Colonialism, that examines the haunting formations of the transparent subject in algorithmic governance and the potential transformative technopolitical systems open to ontoepistemologies other-wise.

He is also a co-editor of the Duke University Press book series, “Anima: Critical Race Studies Otherwise”, and associate editor of the 2023 and 2025 volumes of the Review of Research in Education, one of the flagship journals for the American Educational Research Association.

He is co-founder and co-Director of the Institute in Critical Quantitative, Computational, & Mixed Methodologies as well as The Critical Computation Bureau.

Publications 

Books 

Dixon-Román, E., Lee, C.D., Madhubuti, H.R., Rice, D.W. (Eds.) 2023. Black Radical Love: A New Black Reconstruction through the Thought & Activism of Edmund W. Gordon. Chicago IL: Third World Press.

Dixon-Román, E. 2017. Inheriting Possibility: Social Reproduction and Quantification in Education. Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Dixon-Román, E. & Gordon, E. W. (Eds.) 2012. Thinking Comprehensively About Education: Spaces of Educative Possibility and Their Implications for Public Policy. New York NY: Routledge.

Select Journal Articles

Nichols, T. P., & Dixon-Román, E. (Accepted). “Platform governance and education policy: Power and politics in emerging edtech ecologies.” Educational Evaluation & Policy Analysis.

Dixon-Román, E. with Arlene Fernandez, Julian Quiros, & Nicole Sansone. 2022. Diffracting Boundaries: Toward Post-Philosophies of Quantification and the Black Radical Tradition. Qualitative Inquiry (For a Special Issue on “Post-Philosophies”).

Dixon-Román, E. with Ramon Amaro. 2021. “Haunting, Blackness, & Algorithmic Thought.” e-flux journal 123: 1-11.  (special issue on “Dialogues on Recursive Colonialism, Speculative Computation, and the Techno-Social.”) https://www.e-flux.com/journal/123/437244/haunting-blackness-and-algorithmic-thought/

Dixon-Román, E. with Jasbir Puar. 2021. “Mass Debilitation & Algorithmic Governance.” e-flux journal 123: 1-11.  (special issue on “Dialogues on Recursive Colonialism, Speculative Computation, and the Techno-Social.”) https://www.e-flux.com/journal/123/436945/mass-debilitation-and-algorithmic-governance/

Jocson, K. & Dixon-Román, E. 2021. Becoming Shuri: CTE, Racializing Affect, and the Becoming-Technologist. Reading Research Quarterly 56(2): 257-271.

Parisi, L. & Dixon-Román, E. 2020. Recursive Colonialism & Cosmo-Computation. Social Text Online. 

Dixon-Román, E. 2020. A Haunting Logic of Psychometrics: Toward the Speculative and Indeterminacy of Blackness in Measurement. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice 39(3): 94-96.

Dixon-Román, E., Phil Nichols, & Ama Nyame-Mensah. 2020. The Racializing Forces of/in AI Educational Technologies. Learning, Media & Technology 45(3): 236-250. (Special Issue on “AI and Education: critical perspectives and alternative futures”)

Dixon-Román, E., Nyame-Mensah, Ama, and Russell, Allison. 2019. Algorithmic Legal Reasoning as Racializing Assemblages. Computational Culture: A Journal of Software Studies 7: 1-41. http://computationalculture.net/algorithmic-legal-reasoning-as-racializing-assemblages/.

Leonardo, Z., and Dixon-Román, E. 2018. Post-Colorblindness; Or, Racialized Speech after Symbolic Racism. Educational Philosophy and Theory 50(14): 1386.

Dixon-Román, E. 2017. Regenerative Capacities: New Materialisms, Inheritance, and Biopolitical Technologies in Education Policy. Equity & Excellence in Education 50(4): 434-445.

Dixon-Román, E. 2017. Toward A Hauntology on Data: On The Sociopolitical Forces of Data Assemblages.Research in Education 98(1): 44-58.

de Freitas, E., and Dixon-Román, E. 2017. The computational turn in education research: Critical and creative perspectives on the digital data deluge. Research in Education 98(1): 3-13.

Dixon-Román, E. 2016. Diffractive Possibilities: Cultural Studies and Quantification. Transforming Anthropology24(2):157-167.

de Freitas, E., Dixon-Román, E., and Lather, P. (listed alphabetically) 2016. Alternative Ontologies of Number: Rethinking the Quantitative in Computational Culture. Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies 16(5): 431-434.

Dixon-Román, E. 2016. Algo-Ritmo: More-Than-Human Performative Acts and the Racializing Assemblages of Algorithmic Architectures. Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies 16(5):482-490.

Select Book Chapters

Dixon-Román, E. (In Press) “Algorithmic Governance & Racializaing Affect.” in Affect Theory Reader 2: Worlding, Tensions, Futures. Gregory Seigworth & Carolyn Pedwell (eds.). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Dixon-Román, E. 2023. “Exteriority, Black Noise & the Computational Accident.” In J. Brouwer & S. V. Tuinen (Eds.), technological accidents, accidental technologies. Rotterdam NL: V2_PUBLISHING.

Madaio, Michael, Mayfield, Elijah, Blodgett, Su Lin, & Dixon-Román, Ezekiel. 2023. “ Beyond “Fairness:” Structural (In)Justice Lenses on AI for Education" In Wayne Holmes and Kaśka Porayska-Pomsta (Eds.), The Ethics of AI in Education: Data, algorithms, equity and biases, in educational contexts.

Parisi, L., & Dixon-Román, E. 2020. Data capitalism, sociogenic prediction and recursive indeterminacies. In P. Mörtenböck and H. Mooshammer (Eds.), Data Publics: Public Plurality in an Era of Data Determinacy. (pp. 48-62). New York, NY: Routledge.

Dixon-Román, E., Jackson, John L., & McKinney de Royston, M. 2020. Deconstructing the Quantitative-Qualitative Divide: Toward A New Empiricism. In Handbook of the Cultural Foundations of Learning. Na’ilah Nasir, Carol D. Lee, Roy Pea, and Maxine McKinney de Royston (Eds.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Sonali Rajan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Studies & Applied Educational Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University. She also holds a secondary faculty appointment in the Department of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health. She is currently the Senior Associate Director of the Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Advanced Study. And she is also the Inaugural President of the Research Society for Firearm-Related Harms. Dr. Rajan is a school violence prevention researcher, studying gun violence, school safety, and adverse childhood experiences. She is co-leading research in these areas funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her work prioritizes the needs for schools and communities to collectively attend to the well-being of children, while keeping them safe, reducing their exposure to violence, and ensuring opportunities for them to thrive.

Selected Publications:

*Denotes Teachers College student authors
**Denotes Mailman School of Public Health student authors

Rajan S. (2024) "Anxiety and School Gun Violence in America: Reimagining Solutions.” In press for “Anxiety Culture: The New Global State of Human Affairs,” (Ed. J. P. Allegrante, Johns Hopkins University Press)

Rajan S, **Reeping PM, *Ladhani Z, Vasudevan LM, & Branas CC. (2022). Gun violence in K-12 schools in the United States: Moving towards a preventive (versus reactive) framework. Preventive Medicine, published online ahead of print.

Martin R, Rajan S, Shareef F, Xie K, Allen K, Zimmerman M, & Jay J. (2022). Racial disparities in child exposure to neighborhood firearm violence before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. In press at the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Grummitt L, Kelly E, Barrett E, Rajan S, Newton N, & Keyes K. (2022). Clustering childhood adversity in the U.S. and associations with mental health and substance use among youth. In press at the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

**Bancalari P, Sommer M, & Rajan S. (2022). Community gun violence exposure among urban youth: An overlooked externality of the endemic of gun violence in the United States. Adolescent Research Review, published online ahead of print.

**Reeping PM, Klarevas LJ, Rajan S, Rowhani-Rahbar A, Heinze J, Zeoli AM, Goyal MK, Zimmerman M, and Branas CC. (2022). State gun laws, gun ownership, and K-12 school shootings: Implications for school safety. Journal of School Violence, published online ahead of print.

Rajan S. (2021). School safety and violence: Drawing on a public health approach. International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 18(3), 307-318.

Rajan S, Arora P, Cheng B, *Khoo O, & Verdeli H. (2021). Suicidality and exposure to school-based violence among a nationally representative sample of Asian American and Pacific Islander adolescents. School Psychology Review (Special Issue: School Violence and School Safety), published online ahead of print.

**Reeping PM, Gobaud AN, Branas CC, & Rajan S. (2021). "K-12 School Shootings: Implications for Policy, Prevention, and Child Well-Being." In Ending the War Against Childrne: The Rights of Children to Live Free from Violence (D. Laraque-Arena and B. Stanton, Eds). In press at Pediatrics Clinics of North America.

**Reeping PM, Jacoby S, Rajan S, & Branas CC. (2020). Rapid response to mass shootings: A review. Criminology and Public Policy, 19(1), 295-315.

Rajan S, Branas C, *Myers D, & Agrawal N. (2019). Youth exposure to violence involving a gun: Evidence for adverse childhood experience classification. Journal of Behavioral Medicine (Special Issue), 42(4), 646-657.

Formica M, Rajan S, & Simons N. (2019). Healthcare indicators and firearm homicide: an ecologic study. Journal of Aggression, Conflict, and Peace Research, 11(2).

Rajan S & Branas CC. (2018). Arming schoolteachers: What do we know? Where do we go from here? American Journal of Public Health, 108(7), 860-862.

Rajan S, Branas CC, Hargarten S, & Allegrante J. (2018). Funding for gun violence research is key to the health and safety of the nation. American Journal of Public Health, 108(2), 194-195.

Rajan S, Ruggles KV, Guarino H, & Mateu-Gelabert P. (2018). Heroin use and drug injection among youth also misusing prescription drugs. American Journal of Health Behavior, 42(1): 144 – 155.

*Nelson H & Rajan S. (2018). Barriers, facilitators, and challenges to successful school-based screenings. Health Behavior and Policy Review, 5(4), 57-71.

*Guerra L, Rajan S, & Roberts K. (2018). The implementation of mental health policies and practices in schools: An examination of school- and state-factors. Journal of School Health, 89(4), 328-338.

Rajan S, Vasudevan LV, Ruggles KV, Brown B, & Verdeli H. (2017). Firearms in K-12 schools: what is the responsibility of the education community? Teachers College Record, published online October 5, 2017 (22187).

*Pelcher A. & Rajan S. (2016). After-school program implementation in urban environments: Increasing engagement among adolescent youth. Journal of School Health, 86(8), 585-594.

Rajan S, Namdar R, & Ruggles KV. (2015).  Aggressive and violent behaviors in the school environment among a nationally representative sample of adolescent youth. Journal of School Health, 85(7), 446 - 457.

Ruggles KV & Rajan S. (2014). Gun possession among American youth: A discovery-based approach to understand gun violence. PLOS ONE, 9 (11): e111893.

Dr. Christopher Emdin is the Maxine Greene Chair for Distinguished Contributions to Education and Professor of Science Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is also the  Director of Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship At the STEAM DREAM and Ideal Lab.

He previously served as Robert Naslund Endowed Chair in Curriculum Theory at the University of Southern California, where he was Director of Youth and Community Partnerships at the USC Race and Equity Center.

Dr. Emdin is an alumni fellow at the Hip-hop Archive and Hutchins Center at Harvard University, Scholar in Residence at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and was STEAM Ambassador for the U.S. Department of State and Minorities in Energy Ambassador for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Dr. Emdin holds a Ph.D in Urban Education with a concentration in Mathematics, Science, and Technology; Masters degrees in both Natural Sciences and Education and Bachelors degrees in Physical Anthropology, Biology, and Chemistry.

He is the creator of the HipHopEd social media movement, Science Genius BATTLES and the CREATE Accelerator – an initiative that funds non-profits focused on culture and education. He has been named one of the 27 people bridging divides in the United States by Time magazine and the Root 100 lis of most influential African Americans.

He is the author of numerous award winning works; including the Strage Prize awardee, Urban Science Education for the Hip-hop Generation and the New York Times bestseller, For White Folks Who Teach In the Hood and the Rest of Ya’ll too. His latest books are STEM STEAM Make Dream and Ratchetdemic: Reimagining Academic Success.

Publications

1. Souto-Manning, M., & Emdin, C. (2023). On the harm inflicted by urban teacher education programs: Learning from the historical trauma experienced by teachers of color. Urban Education, 58(6), 1238-1270. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0042085920926249 
2. Levy, I. P., Emdin, C., & Adjapong, E. (2022). Lyric writing as an emotion processing intervention for school counselors: Hip-Hop Spoken Word Therapy and Motivational Interviewing. Journal of Poetry Therapy, 35(2), 114-130. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08893675.2021.2004372 
3. Emdin, C. (2021). Ratchetdemic: Reimagining academic success. Beacon Press. 
4. Emdin, C. (2020). A ratchetdemic reality pedagogy and/as cultural freedom in urban education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(9), 947-960. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00131857.2019.1669446
5.  Emdin, C., Adjapong, E., & Levy, I. P. (2021, July). On science genius and cultural agnosia: Reality pedagogy and/as Hip-Hop rooted cultural teaching in STEM Education. In The Educational Forum (Vol. 85, No. 4, pp. 391-405). Routledge. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00131725.2021.1957636